


tender glow

by burstaffinity



Series: because i love jolly ranchers [1]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Alvis is Ontos, M/M, alvis as a blade, alvis as a chef worse than mythra. may god help us., hints of fiora going to alcomoth to get some bird lady feathers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27330517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burstaffinity/pseuds/burstaffinity
Summary: just an ordinary morning
Relationships: Alvis/Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles)
Series: because i love jolly ranchers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2193516
Comments: 17
Kudos: 43





	tender glow

**Author's Note:**

> the name comes from [this "i am setsuna" track](https://youtu.be/FiI1jTI_7xQ)

“Your coffee, Master Shulk.” 

Alvis’s coffee…

If it wasn’t “motor oil” it was “weak bean water”, according to Fiora. 

Not that Shulk could tell the difference. 

“Well, I doubt his coffee will kill you, anyway,” she had said, and thus decreed that coffee was the only thing Alvis was permitted to make him. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any other kind of food -- that would have to come from someone else. A necessary intervention. Shulk did not know how to cook, and his palate was too unrefined for him to register how truly awful Alvis’s cooking was. 

“It’s like he’s _trying_ to kill you -- and everyone else, for that matter.”

“But he got me to eat a vegetable!”

“That was _completely_ burnt! You’ll get the same kind of nutrients from eating a lump of coal.”

“It tasted fine to me!”

She started having their food delivered to them soon after, either from herself (as was the case this morning), or from someone else if she wasn’t in town -- which she often wasn’t, these days. She’d just gotten back the other day, in fact, from one of her increasing-in-frequency trips to Alcamoth. 

Who did she have cook in her stead? Reyn, usually. Shulk rather liked receiving deliveries from Reyn. He’d been learning how to cook from Fiora and the cooks at Colony 6. Shulk was banned from having an opinion on food, so it wasn’t Reyn’s dishes that made him happy; it was seeing how proud Reyn was in what he had created. 

Alvis never took “pride” in his coffee -- or the food he had made before Fiora’s intervention. Shulk would rise early in the morning to work on a project. He would complain of being tired. Coffee made Homs more alert. Thus, it was most logical to provide… “ _Master_ ”...

“How many times do I have to ask you to stop calling me that?”

Alvis took a seat next to him, resting his elbows on the desk as he looked at Shulk coyly. “Until you acknowledge it as a term of endearment.” 

“It’s too formal…”

“Then I shall call you ‘dearest Shulk’,” he replied with a knowing grin.

Because that made the blood rush to Shulk’s cheeks. Alvis knew that would embarrass Shulk. 

“Can’t you just… call me by my name?” Shulk replied.

Alvis diverted his gaze to the window that sat at the back end of Shulk’s desk. He didn’t have blood that would flush his cheeks, so Shulk had to ascertain his emotions through their resonance instead -- and what he felt was rather complex. Not unexpected, for Alvis: he hid his feelings behind riddles or jokes to avoid expressing them directly. 

What Alvis had instead of blood were what he called “ether lines”, running through his body like --

“Like the lights on a Faced Mechon,” Shulk had said.

“Aesthetically, yes, but those lights were red because of the blood of the Homs that piloted them,” Alvis had replied. “My ether lines correspond to the color of my crystal, which just so happens to be red.”

The burgundy crystal he’d been wearing since they first met.

“It’s always been on my body, even before I was brought into this world,” Alvis had said. “Of course, existing in a world where most inhabitants do not have a crystal on their chest… would invite unwanted questions. Hence the choker.”

He didn’t wear the choker anymore. There was no point, “especially now that I glow in the dark,” he had said with a touch of ruefulness. 

“You don’t have to be an ‘ether light’ to the children if you don’t want to,” Shulk had advised -- but he could feel, from their resonance, that as quietly embarrassed as Alvis was to glow in the dark, he didn’t mind letting the children watch his ether lines flow through his new attire at night. It made him happy, in fact, to provide some joy to the people of the world, after all he had done before with Zanza. 

But of course, Alvis never said any of that out loud. 

“Are you still working on that trinket?” Alvis asked, still gazing out the window -- a gaze that was immediately redirected towards Shulk.

Shulk quickly attempted to suppress the panic he felt in response to Alvis’s question. Alvis couldn’t read his mind, but he _could_ sense Shuk’s emotions, just as much as Shulk could sense Alvis’s -- and Alvis was very astute in all things (except cooking, apparently). 

“Yes. Still working on it,” Shulk replied.

The trinket he was working on was a pocket watch. For Alvis. 

It wasn’t the most artistic thing in the world, but… Shulk was known for fixing and even creating gadgets for other people. So why not make one for Alvis? That way, if they were ever separated (and negotiations w/ Alcamoth suggested that would happen soon, if brief in its duration), he’d always have something to remind him of Shulk. 

He could sense Alvis’s curiosity, his drive to deduce -- and his decision to drop it. He simply pushed Shulk’s cup of coffee closer to him. “Whatever it is, do take care not to overwork yourself.”

“I will,” Shulk said, picking up the coffee and taking a sip. It tasted different than yesterday’s batch. Was this the “watery” coffee or the “oil” coffee? Shulk couldn’t tell. When he looked up from his cup, he noticed that Alvis was staring with a raised eyebrow.

“You will… overwork yourself?” Alvis asked, his mischievous grin returning.

Shulk quickly shook his head. “N-no, I meant, I _won’t_ do that!” 

Alvis chuckled. “Very well, Master Shulk.” 

Shulk sighed, placed his cup back on his desk -- and leaned forward to give Alvis a kiss. “I love you, Alvis,” he said as he pulled away, resting his forehead against Alvis’s.

And Alvis replied, “I love you, too… Shulk.”


End file.
